electric rental cars

[Scott Norwood]

Has anyone rented an electric car before? How does this work?

The last couple of times I have tried to rent a car, the cheapest option has been an electric vehicle. What is the practical side of this? Do you have to return it full of electricity? How do you find the charging devices and pay for their use? Is there still an incompatibility between "Tesla chargers" and "everything-else chargers," or has that been fully resolved now? What does the charging cost, and how much would I expect to pay to drive 100 miles in an EV? Assuming that the use case is for a several-day trip with low-ish mileage requirements (equivalent of one tank of gas), is there any significant disadvantage to renting an EV? And/or is there a significant cost savings?

I'm sort of interested in how all of this works, but I have never driven an EV before and don't want to spend a good chunk of a vacation learning about the pitfalls of them.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Your mileage may vary. (pun intended). I think it depends on your location if it is a good idea or not.

This map came out in 2022, i'm not sure if it has been continuously updated.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experi...argingStations

My laymen's understanding of the situation is that the stations are becoming somewhat interchangeable now, but there may be physical adapters required that do not come with a rental. There are still supercharger stations out there though that can only charge teslas. But I don't think more are being installed.

[Frank Angel]

Wow, so they are incentivizing you to choose an EV? I always wonder how they get around that charging issue in cities were most residents live in apartment buildings and have to park on the street like I do. I've driven around in a EV and found the very fact that there is practically no motor noise, certainly compared to even the quietest CE cars, couple that with the incredible 0 to 60 power that electric motor brings to the experience and that was enough for me to (at first) want my next car to be an EV. But then comes the real full-stop issue of, What About Charging It? You live in an apartment building like me and about 2 million other people here in Brooklyn and we can't charge overnight like people who live in houses. Even trailer park living affords a way to easily charge overnight. What are we supposed to do...hope we can park facing the side of my building where the windows are and drop a #4 AWG cable out the window long enough to reach my car hoping people can jump over it on the sidewalk? I've never heard a sales pitch for an EV that explained what the millions of people who don't live in houses are supposed to do. And I am a green as anyone could be, but I can't see how CE cars or Hybrids will ever become obsolete as the greenies seem to wish they would be.

[Scott Norwood]

Wow, so they are incentivizing you to choose an EV?

I don't think that the rental companies care. I assume that they are just less popular because people like me don't understand them.

I always wonder how they get around that charging issue in cities were most residents live in apartment buildings and have to park on the street like I do.

I am in the same situation (although I do not currently own a car). I don't think that EVs really work for that use case unless one has access to a charger at work or some other place that is convenient. I am not going to run an extension cord out my window and down the street.

From what I can tell, the best use case for an EV is as one of two cars in a two-car family with a house and garage. One car (the EV) can be used for commuting and driving around town. It can be charged at home at night or at work during the day (if the workplace has a charging setup). The other car (gasoline powered) would be used for vacations and longer trips, where charging would not be as convenient.

I'm not really a "car guy" and am the sort of person who will happily drive a Honda or Toyota or whatever is reliable and easy and inexpensive to service. I used to think that I would never own an EV, but I now suspect that I probably will someday. At some point, it will become the default vehicle for many people, and buying gasoline and getting an ICE vehicle serviced will start to become difficult and annoying, just as the EV equivalents are today. The open questions seem to be how soon this will happen, and how (or if) the electrical grid will manage to keep up with increased demand.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Even when you are fortunate enough to move into a new building like mine, with accommodations for installing your own charger at your designate garage space...........

It turns out the developer, despite the sales pitch, never outfitted the garage with enough electrical capacity to handle more than 6 installs (for 32 residences)!

Thankfully my affordable designated unit did not even come with a parking space, so not my problem. But crazy false-marketing to EV owners or would-be owners.

One day maybe there will be a residential charger that can network with other chargers to load share, but we are not there yet.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Scott,

All the Hertz Tesla rentals here in Nashville are for sale via one common used car lot. I remember reading in an article that all customers did was complan about them.There are also not enough chargers country wide to support all the EV's out there. There is also a lot of charge station vandalism where people steal the copper wire. One is probably fine to own if you live in a state where it's warm a lot of the time.

I have taken Uber Tesla rides here and there, and the car rides very nice. The interiors are very industrial, but comfortable. The almost square steering wheel would drive me crazy. Also

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teslas-...-cold-weather/

[Leo Enticknap]

Hertz incentivizes EV rentals because nobody wants them. Just as you're expected to top up the gas immediately before returning an ICE rental car, they will charge you an extortionate fee if you return them with a lower charge than when you checked them out.

I encountered this problem last year, when, thanks to some bizarre coincidences, I had to make three OOT trips to the Bay Area within the space of a month and a half. Hertz at San Jose airport now has mainly EVs. I booked a regular compact SUV for the rental, but when I arrived, I was told that the previous renter had crashed and totaled it, meaning that a Tesla was all they could offer me. I had no idea if the hotel I was staying at had charging facilities, and so told them I would only accept it if they promised that they would not charge me extra if I returned it with an almost flat battery. Eventually she agreed. The hotel did have two chargers, but using them was a pain in the butt because I had to keep going downstairs to see if one was free, and then when I finally did get the Tesla into it, I had to come back an hour and a half later to remove it, because others were waiting for the charging spot.

On the second trip, once again Hertz tried to pressure me into taking a Tesla. Not wanting to stay up until almost midnight faffing around charging it, I said no, and had to take a horrible great big Suburban as a result. On the final trip, I drove my own car (Honda HR-V: simple, ultra reliable, high 30s of MPG) all the way from SoCal. It only took around 2-3 hours longer than air and rental car, the only other viable airport for where I was going was Oakland (where carjackings around the airport are not uncommon and if you stop at any gas station near the airport, the chances are that a criminal gang will show up and relieve you of your vehicle), and I didn't want to have to play silly games with a rental car company trying to foist an EV on me again.

Also, I had to pay $20 for the charge, which is roughly double what the gas would have cost for an ICE car of the same size to do the same mileage.

If and when it's possible to drive into a hotel parking spot, plug the thing in without any wait for a charger, and then forget about it until the following morning, I'll have no problem renting an EV. But until then, no thank you.

[Lyle Romer]

Last year I was picking up a rental car in Philadelphia and got to observe the entertainment of people who booked the EV because it was the cheapest and then played dumb pretending they didn't realize it was an EV and were demanding a gas car for the same price. The manager was having none of it.

[Leo Enticknap]

It's hard to think of a worse use case for EVs in their current state (and Teslas in particular, for two specific reasons) of development than as rental cars.

- Charging availability is most problematic and expensive in public locations and hotels, which is exactly where anyone renting an EV will need to charge it

- Hertz (and likely the other rental agencies as well) imposes punitive fees if you don't recharge it before returning it

- There is a significant learning curve involved in driving an EV for the first time (especially getting used to regenerative braking), one that you're unlikely to want to tackle immediately after many hours of air travel and on unfamiliar roads

- Teslas specifically (and likely other EVs as well) are a lot more expensive to repair after an accident than ICE equivalents, and rental cars are involved in about 20x more accidents per miles driven than privately owned ones.

- And now there is the wave of politically motivated vandalism targeting Teslas. Cars are most vulnerable to criminal activity when parked in a publically accessible place, which is exactly where anyone renting a car will likely have to park it.

Hertz's decision to buy 100,000 Teslas a few years ago must surely be destined to become an MBA case study as one of the most moronic business decisions ever made.

[Scott Norwood]

Agreed with Leo. Based upon this thread and some further research of mine, any cost advantage of an EV rental (lower rental fees, potentially lower per-mile cost) seem to be completely outweighed by the inconvenience and extra time involved. At least for now, and at least for my own use cases for rental cars. I could see doing it if I were in the process of buying a car and an EV was a possible option, but I am not in that situation now.

My favorite rental cars are the most "normal" ones, where I can get in, start the engine, adjust the mirrors, temperature, seat, and radio, and drive without much hassle. There might be good reasons to, say, put the seat adjustment controls on the door, or the gas cap opening latch inside the glove compartment, but odd design decisions like that result in cars that are poorly suited for short-term (e.g. rental) users.

Through an odd set of circumstances, I rented a Mercedes once, since it was the only car available at the time. It was a very nice car, but I couldn't figure out how to adjust the radio. It actually had _one_ knob to control everything about it, and I never figured out how to change the station.

[Ryan Gallagher]

- There is a significant learning curve involved in driving an EV for the first time (especially getting used to regenerative braking), one that you're unlikely to want to tackle immediately after many hours of air travel and on unfamiliar roads

Yeah I feel like the higher tech the car is the less suitable a rental it becomes (ICE or EV). My father has a fancy late model Mercedes, it's been two years, and he still doesn't know how to make it do certain things. The learning curve for many on a new digital interface is much slower than the old "standard" locations for such things with physical buttons, instead of menus layers deep.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

And before you rent, you need to plan on knowing where the charge stations are located. This way you can watch the mileage left and know where and when you can stop to charge back up. Or at least hopefully you'll be able to with out a long wait.

[Leo Enticknap]

Charging would be less of an issue if the rental agencies let you return the car with an almost flat battery for no extra fee (or at least, no more of an extra fee than you'd expect to pay for gas to cover the same mileage at a regular gas station). When I travel on work and rent a car, its typical use is airport > hotel > job site > hotel > job site > hotel > airport: I'm unlikely to do more than 100-150 miles during the rental, which is well within the battery capacity of a late model EV. But when there's a $100 surcharge for bringing it back with a flat battery, that's a serious disincentive, because as Mark notes, you've then got to do homework figuring out where you're going to be able to charge your rental EV before leaving home on the trip.

My favorite rental cars are the most "normal" ones, where I can get in, start the engine, adjust the mirrors, temperature, seat, and radio, and drive without much hassle. [...] Through an odd set of circumstances, I rented a Mercedes once, since it was the only car available at the time.

Someone I know who used to work for Enterprise told me that this happens frequently. It's usually because either the previous renter of the car that was earmarked for you got into an accident with it, or they wanted to extend the rental at the last minute. She told me that she was trained to spin it to customers as "Congratulations! We're happy to offer you a free upgrade!" Sometimes it works, but sometimes the customer doesn't want the Merc, or BMW, or whatever, because they don't want the complexity, they are worried about crime if they have to park it in a dubious part of town, or (if traveling on their own dime and not able to expense the rental) they don't want the poor gas mileage.

I am with Scott 100% about preferring a "normal" rental car. Driving an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads is stressful enough, without the added stress of an overly complex user interface and not being able to do basic control functions from muscle memory. I'd love it if the rental agencies could offer the same model of car as mine, but for some reason none of the major ones seem to buy Hondas.

[Lyle Romer]

It would be helpful, both for rental cars an in general, if things like windshield wiper controls and gas tank lock releases were in standard locations and switches turned the same direction. Windshield wiper controls are all over the place from vehicle to vehicle. Sometimes on the left stick, sometimes on the right stick, sometimes clockwise is on/faster, other times counterclockwise is on/faster.

The stupid (and seemingly useless since the 70's oil crisis) gas tank locks are the worst for me with rental cars. There have been several times that I've had to search the internet to find where the unlock button is. Although, none are as poorly placed as my 1989 Mustang was that had the fuel tank unlock inside the glove box to make it be the maximum pain every time I filled up.

[Josh Jones]

Back in the early teens when the cost of gas went through the roof, I decided to get into CNG vehicles. I had a Honda civic and a large Dodge cargo van, both with CNG fuel systems. The experience of driving and maintaining those things for 5 years seems to mirror a lot of the current EV driving experience. I had route spreadsheets made up with fueling station locations, their distance from one another, contact info, etc. I would call around to all the fuel stops on a long trip to make sure everything was green before I left. If I was going to a place with no refueling stations, I would have to arrange for the vehicle to be trailered at least one way. The range anxiety is real, and with CNG there is always the risk of a station that does not give you a full tank, and then your left without options many times. In the end, it saved me a bunch of money, and it was an interesting engineering experience. I would do it again, but only with much larger fuel capacity. I've gotten kinda used to getting over 400 miles between stops, and neither of my old vehicles would do much over 200 miles.

Josh